Rikki Streicher (1922–1994) was a leader in
San Francisco's LGBTQ movement. In the 1960s, she had an active leadership role in the
Society for Individual Rights
The homophile movement is a collective term for the main organisations and publications supporting and representing sexual minorities in the 1950s to 1960s around the world. The name comes from the term ''homophile'', which was commonly used by the ...
, an organization that promoted equal rights for gays and lesbians. In 1966, she opened and ran
Maud's, a year prior to the
San Francisco’s Summer of Love; it stayed open for 23 years, at that time the longest continuously running lesbian-owned
lesbian bar
A lesbian bar (sometimes called a "women's bar") is a drinking establishment that caters exclusively or predominantly to lesbian women. While often conflated, the lesbian bar has a history distinct from that of the gay bar.
Significance
Lesb ...
in the country. She opened a second bar, Amelia’s, in 1978 in the city’s
Mission district
The Mission District (Spanish: ''Distrito de la Misión''), commonly known as The Mission (Spanish: ''La Misión''), is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California. One of the oldest neighborhoods in San Francisco, the Mission District's name is ...
, with both venues serving as makeshift community centers for lesbians who had very few accepting socializing options. In the early 1980s, she was a co-founder of the international
Gay Olympics, later called Gay Games, she helped to create the
Federation of Gay Games
The Gay Games is a worldwide sport and cultural event that promotes acceptance of sexual diversity, featuring lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) athletes, artists and other individuals.
Founded as the Gay Olympics, it was star ...
and served on the board of directors. In 1994, she received the
Dr. Tom Waddell Award for her contribution to Gay Athletics.
Streicher died of cancer later that year, and was survived by her partner, Mary Sager. The Rikki Streicher Field, an athletic field and recreation center in San Francisco's
Castro District
The Castro District, commonly referred to as the Castro, is a neighborhood in Eureka Valley in San Francisco. The Castro was one of the first gay neighborhoods in the United States. Having transformed from a working-class neighborhood throug ...
, was named after her.
Early life
Streicher was born in 1922.
She served in the military and lived in
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
in the 1940s, where she spent time in the gay bars of that city. She also frequented the gay bars of
North Beach in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
.
Butch-Femme roles were very fixed at that time. Streicher then identified as
butch, and was photographed in 1945 in a widely published image, sitting in
Oakland
Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay A ...
's
Claremont Resort
Claremont Club & Spa, A Fairmont Hotel is a historic hotel situated at the foot of Claremont Canyon in the Berkeley Hills and located in the Claremont district, near the intersection of Claremont Avenue and Ashby Avenue; the site straddles the ...
with other
lesbians
A lesbian is a homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with fem ...
, wearing a suit and tie.
San Francisco and national activities
Society for Individual Rights
Streicher had an active leadership role in the
Society for Individual Rights
The homophile movement is a collective term for the main organisations and publications supporting and representing sexual minorities in the 1950s to 1960s around the world. The name comes from the term ''homophile'', which was commonly used by the ...
(SIR), an organization of gay men and lesbians created in San Francisco in 1964 that promoted equal rights for homosexuals, political empowerment, and community building through fundraisers, dances, and classes. By 1966, SIR had established the first public gay community center in the United States, and become the largest
homophile
Terms used to describe homosexuality have gone through many changes since the emergence of the first terms in the mid-19th century. In English, some terms in widespread use have been sodomite, Achillean, Sapphic, Uranian, homophile, lesbian, g ...
organization in the country.
Maud's
In 1966, Streicher opened
Maud's, originally called "Maud's Study", or "The Study", a lesbian bar on Cole St. in the
Haight-Ashbury
Haight-Ashbury () is a district of San Francisco, California, named for the intersection of Haight and Ashbury streets. It is also called The Haight and The Upper Haight. The neighborhood is known as one of the main centers of the counterculture ...
district of San Francisco. The following year, the Haight-Ashbury would become the epicenter of the
hippie
A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to different countries around ...
movement during the 1967
Summer of Love
The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people, mostly young people sporting hippie fashions of dress and behavior, converged in San Francisco's neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury. ...
. Maud's, said one historian, served to "bridge the gap between San Francisco's lesbian community and its hippie generation.” Because women were not allowed to be employed as
bartenders
A bartender (also known as a barkeep, barman, barmaid, or a mixologist) is a person who formulates and serves alcoholic or soft drink beverages behind the bar, usually in a licensed establishment as well as in restaurants and nightclubs, but ...
in San Francisco until 1971, Streicher had to either tend bar herself or hire male bartenders. The bar quickly became a popular gathering place for San Francisco lesbians and
bisexual
Bisexuality is a romantic or sexual attraction or behavior toward both males and females, or to more than one gender. It may also be defined to include romantic or sexual attraction to people regardless of their sex or gender identity, whi ...
women. One notable customer of Maud's was singer
Janis Joplin
Janis Lyn Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer and musician. One of the most successful and widely known Rock music, rock stars of her era, she was noted for her powerful mezzo-soprano vocals and "electric" stage ...
. Activists
Del Martin
Dorothy Louise Taliaferro "Del" Martin (May 5, 1921 – August 27, 2008) and Phyllis Ann Lyon (November 10, 1924 – April 9, 2020) were an American lesbian couple known as feminist and gay-rights activists.
Martin and Lyon met in 1950 ...
and
Phyllis Lyon
Dorothy Louise Taliaferro "Del" Martin (May 5, 1921 – August 27, 2008) and Phyllis Ann Lyon (November 10, 1924 – April 9, 2020) were an American lesbian couple known as feminist and gay-rights activists.
Martin and Lyon met in 1950 ...
were also early patrons of Maud's. Maud's remained opened for twenty-three years, becoming at that time the longest continuously running lesbian-owned lesbian bar in the country. In the book ''Wide Open Town'', Nan Amilla Boyd describes Maud's as a " lesbian bar, clubhouse and community center". She highlights the fight of bar owners like Streicher during the 1950s and 1960s to "secure public space for queer people and says many lesbians 'depended on bar life, the central artery of queer life' for their activities.'
The bar and its closing in 1989 were documented in Paris Poirier's internationally distributed film ''
Last Call at Maud's
''Last Call at Maud's'' is a 1993 American documentary film directed by Paris Poirier. The film explores the history of lesbian culture from the 1940s to the 1990s as it records the last evening of Maud's, a San Francisco lesbian bar that clos ...
''. The film weaves the broader history of lesbian bars in the United States into customers' reminisces about old times. In it, Streicher speculated that increased acceptance of lesbianism in public spaces and a turn towards sobriety brought on by the
1980s AIDS crisis may have been contributing factors to Maud's closing.
Amelia's
![Amelia's Bar Sign by Lindsay Eyink](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Amelia%27s_Bar_Sign_by_Lindsay_Eyink.jpg)
In 1978, at the height of the
disco era
Disco is a genre of dance music and a subculture that emerged in the 1970s from the United States' urban nightlife scene. Its sound is typified by four-on-the-floor beats, syncopated basslines, string sections, brass and horns, electric pia ...
, Streicher opened Amelia's, a more spacious bar and dance club at 647 Valencia Street in San Francisco's
Mission District
The Mission District (Spanish: ''Distrito de la Misión''), commonly known as The Mission (Spanish: ''La Misión''), is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California. One of the oldest neighborhoods in San Francisco, the Mission District's name is ...
, named after
Amelia Earhart
Amelia Mary Earhart ( , born July 24, 1897; disappeared July 2, 1937; declared dead January 5, 1939) was an American aviation pioneer and writer. Earhart was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She set many oth ...
. The Mission district, and particularly Valencia Street, became a gathering place for lesbians from the 1970s through the early 1990s, and was home to several organizations and businesses that catered to women, including
The Women's Building
The Women's Building is a women-led non-profit arts and education community center located in San Francisco, California, which advocates self-determination, gender equality and social justice. The four-story building rents to multiple tenants an ...
, a non-profit organization; Old Wives Tales, a bookstore; Osento, a woman-only bathhouse; and the Artemis Society, a lesbian club which later became the Artemis Cafe.
Amelia's was open until 1991, when Streicher sold it and it became the Elbo Room bar (the Elbo Room closed in 2018). Its closure signaled a change in how lesbians met and congregated in San Francisco. As Rob Morse of the ''
San Francisco Examiner
The ''San Francisco Examiner'' is a newspaper distributed in and around San Francisco, California, and published since 1863.
Once self-dubbed the "Monarch of the Dailies" by then-owner William Randolph Hearst, and flagship of the Hearst Corporat ...
'' wrote about Amelia's, "More lesbians than ever live in San Francisco, but...the last lesbian bar in The City, Amelia's, will close."
[Morse, Rob (November 12, 1991). "As San Francisco goes, so what?" '']San Francisco Examiner
The ''San Francisco Examiner'' is a newspaper distributed in and around San Francisco, California, and published since 1863.
Once self-dubbed the "Monarch of the Dailies" by then-owner William Randolph Hearst, and flagship of the Hearst Corporat ...
''. pg. 3. "It's a victim of the lesbian community becoming more diverse...the 30-and-over lesbian crowd just isn't going out to bars as much anymore. The ones who do tend to go to mainstream bars and clubs. There is an absence of a lesbian community in the presence of a million lesbians...Today it's 'I, me, mine,'...Well, tempus fugit. On Saturday night there will be a goodbye party called 'Last Call at Amelia's.'" "It's a victim of the lesbian community becoming more diverse," Streicher said, "the 30-and-over lesbian crowd just isn't going out to bars as much anymore. The ones who do tend to go to mainstream bars and clubs."
There was no lesbian bar again in San Francisco until the opening of the
Lexington Club in 1996 ("The Lex" closed in 2015 as a result of the city's increasing
gentrification
Gentrification is the process of changing the character of a neighborhood through the influx of more Wealth, affluent residents and businesses. It is a common and controversial topic in urban politics and urban planning, planning. Gentrification ...
).
An obituary in ''
The Advocate'', published two months after Streicher's death, erroneously reported that Amelia's was called "Amanda's". Every June during
Pride Week
LGBT pride (also known as gay pride or simply pride) is the promotion of the self-affirmation, dignity, equality, and increased visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people as a social group. Pride, as opposed to sh ...
, the Elbo Room replaced its sign with Amelia's to honor the bar and its lesbian clientele.
Gay Olympics
Streicher was a passionate promoter of gay and lesbian softball teams and co-founder of the
Gay Olympics, later named Gay Games, which started in San Francisco. She helped to create the Federation of Gay Games and served on the board of directors. "Sports are the great social equalizer," she said. "It is perhaps the only time that it does not matter who you are but how you play the game." At the fourth annual Gay Games in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
in 1994, attended by 55,000 people, she received the Dr.
Tom Waddell
Tom Waddell (born Thomas Flubacher; November 1, 1937 – July 11, 1987) was an American physician, decathlete who competed at the 1968 Summer Olympics, and founder of the Gay Olympics (later known as the '' Gay Games'').
Early life
Waddell was b ...
Award for her contribution to Gay Athletics. She is also listed in the hall of fame for the San Francisco Gay Softball League.
Death and legacy
Streicher died of cancer at age 68 on August 21, 1994, and was survived by her partner, Mary Sager.
Upon her death, the mayor of San Francisco lowered the city flags to half-mast. The Rikki Streicher Field, an athletic field and recreation center in San Francisco's
Castro District
The Castro District, commonly referred to as the Castro, is a neighborhood in Eureka Valley in San Francisco. The Castro was one of the first gay neighborhoods in the United States. Having transformed from a working-class neighborhood throug ...
, was named after her. Scholars of LGBT history have speculated that the lesbian bars of Streicher's era, which served an important purpose at that time, have closed as the result of gentrification, greater acceptance of lesbians in mainstream society and the popularity of
online dating
Online dating, also known as Internet dating, Virtual dating, or Mobile app dating, is a relatively recent method used by people with a goal of searching for and interacting with potential romantic or sexual partners, via the internet. An onlin ...
and social media.
One writer looking back on the era noted that Streicher and her lesbian bars were instrumental in creating a protective space where lesbian women could come of age and help others do the same:
References
External links
Bay Area Lesbian Archives
{{DEFAULTSORT:Streicher, Rikki
American women in business
Lesbian sportswomen
American people of German descent
People from San Francisco
American LGBT businesspeople
American LGBT sportspeople